Impostor and the Black Sheep
by Poesia-Riptide
Summary: AU. Two men, the most unlikely of friends, have a deep conversation about their lives at a time when it's completely irrelevant.


**::/Impostor and the Black Sheep/::**

**.**

A/N: In this story Nakul's best friend is Rocky. You have been warned. My dear haters, your flames will be used to roast marshmallows, after which I shall have a magnificent garden party and you're not invited.

Inspiration credits to

-Nico di Angelo and Luke Castellan (_Percy Jackson_), Tobias Eaton (_Divergent_) and Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter) for Nakul's character

-Mycroft Holmes (_Sherlock Holmes_), Blaise Zabini (_Harry Potter_), Johanna Mason (_The Hunger Games_), Magnus Bane (_The Mortal Instruments_) and the Joker (_Batman_) for Rocky's character.

Cover art is by me. No stealing.

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The grass was green, the sky was blue, the birds were chirping, and two men were going about their daily routine. One of them was sitting on a red sofa, his eyes fixed on the screen of the sleek silver laptop he was typing vigorously away at. The other, who stood beside him, was propped against the wall. He was lean and dark, with thick bangs falling untamed over his forehead and a thin, somewhat unshaven face. Dressed in a plain green shirt and beaten-up jeans, he had a green-and-silver striped scarf draped casually around his neck and over one shoulder. A pendant shaped like an R dangled from a chain around his neck. "Pass me the popcorn, mate," he said.

The first man paused his typing and turned to scowl up at the other. He was fair-skinned, with a fine mop of shiny dark hair and steely eyes. His dark blue T-shirt, worn over cargo pants, had the word '_Bazinga!'_ printed on it in yellow. "I am currently in the middle of a very important task. Get it yourself." With that, he turned back to the screen in a huff, but his friend was too quick for him. Peering over his shoulder, he let out a snort. "Seriously? Pinball? That's your ultra-important task? Give it here," he said, grabbing at the laptop, but the younger man hurriedly held it out of his reach. "Rocky, seriously!" he bellowed.

"Nakul," Rocky retorted, coming around to slump down onto the other end of the sofa across from Nakul. "Why is everything such a huge deal with you, man? When I was your age-"

He was cut off by an exasperated groan from Nakul. "Are you listening to yourself? When you were my age, it seems. How old are you, forty?"

Rocky didn't take the bait. "Thirty-three and a half," he said with dignity, reaching into the bowl of popcorn that lay on the sofa in between him and Nakul. "I only happened to be impersonating a forty-year-old man. And since you're only twenty-five, I rest my case, kiddo."

"Do not call me that if you value your-" Nakul broke off in mid-rant and blinked. "Oh, wait."

"Yup." A sly smirk lifted one corner of Rocky's mouth and he pushed his bangs sideways, out of his eyes. The movement brought the pale scar on his left temple into focus. It was thin and jagged, stretching down to his cheekbone. "If you've successfully broken your own high score record on Pinball for the day, why don't you message Nilanjana?"

"That's over," Nakul said brusquely, closing the pinball game and setting aside his laptop. "_Way_ over." He glanced at his friend with raised eyebrows. "Why don't you call Sangeeta, then?"

The instant reply was a long, drawn-out sigh from Rocky. "Because that's over too, my friend. Overer than over. In every way imaginable." He gave Nakul a weary punch on the shoulder. "Let's just get used to the fact that you and me are now officially two available men, destined to spend all eternity on this sofa that clashes horribly with my shirt."

"So how about sharing that popcorn with me as a symbol of our shared Forever Alone-ness?" Nakul asked wryly, and Rocky snickered, taking his hand out of the bowl. "Go ahead. Though I'm more of a troll than a Forever Alone, if you ask me."

"You could have fooled me," laughed Nakul as he scooped up a handful of popcorn. "I always had you pegged as more of a Bitch Please." That earned him a poke in the ribs, which he returned with gusto. They sat in silence for a while, finishing the popcorn, and finally Nakul spoke up. "You know, Rocky, I've always wondered something."

"And what's that?"

"How did you actually get into this in the first place?" Nakul made a vague gesture. "You know. The whole underworld mess. I mean, I totally understand if you don't want to talk about it-"

"Nah." Rocky's voice was suddenly different. He shook his head slowly. "I suppose I should tell you. You had to know some time or another. Now is as good a time as any." He sat up straight, stretching his legs out in front of him and picking up the empty popcorn bowl, turning it around and around absently. "I guess it all started when I got separated from my parents. In a communal riot, of all things. I was fifteen." His tone was flat, no emotion detectable in it. "They attacked the church on the night before Christmas. My mother told me to run, that she and my father would follow. I never should have listened."

He hung his head, his swept-back bangs sliding down to fall in his eyes once again. "Anyway, I ran until I couldn't run any more, and fell asleep under a cart, believe it or not. In the morning, they found me."

"Who?"

"Not my parents, obviously," Rocky said drily, a trace of his usual self returning. "The dons. A family, clichéd as it may sound. They took me in, brought me up, and before I even realised it, they made me one of them. When normal kids turn eighteen, they know how to drive. But by the time I hit eighteen I could shoot, throw knives, single-handedly fight up to three men at a time..." He scowled down at the popcorn bowl as though it was responsible for all his troubles. "You'll probably be shocked to know that among all this, I finished school, too. And college. Yeah, I know," he added, in response to Nakul's surprised look. "Of course, I did all of that while simultaneously learning the tricks of the trade."

He knew the older man didn't appreciate physical gestures of affection, but Nakul reached out and patted him on the shoulder anyway. Rocky gave him one of his characteristic half-smiles, the kind that made you wonder if he even meant to smile at all or was just messing with you. Or both, which was usually the case. "Anyway," he continued, Nakul glad to hear the old devil-may-care drawl returning to his friend's voice, "That, kid, is how I got into this mess." He raised his hands with a flourish as though acknowledging an invisible audience, and turned his gaze on Nakul. "So let's hear yours, then."

"Mine?" Nakul was taken aback. Of all the things he'd been expecting, this certainly wasn't it. "You already know that," he said, but Rocky shook his head impatiently. "I know what happened, moron. My question is, _why_ did it happen? What caused the whole mess in the first place?"

It was the first time anyone had asked Nakul that, ever since the 'whole mess', as Rocky put it, had happened. Unsure of how to respond, he stared ahead without really seeing, his mind racing back in time as he tried to find an answer to Rocky's question. Why, indeed, had he become what he had? Even as he pondered, however, he knew. And for the first time, he voiced it. "My father."

"Your father," Rocky repeated, dragging the words out and tilting his head slightly as he raised his eyebrows. "What about your father was the catalyst to this catastrophe in your life?"

"You're a poet and didn't know it," Nakul remarked sarcastically, and frowned as something occurred to him. "Wait. _'Catalyst'? _Since when did you start using scientific jargon?" A wave of concern washed over him when he saw Rocky flinch and look away. "Rocky, mate, everything OK?" he asked warily.

In response, Rocky shook his head and got to his feet. Scowling at the floor, he shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. "Yeah. Slip of the tongue. Forget I said anything."

"Don't give me that." The former thug felt himself snatched by the elbow and spun around to face Nakul, who looked, funnily enough, like ACP Pradyuman himself during an interrogation. "Come on, spill. What's this great secret you're acting so defensive about?"

Rocky shrugged and walked a little distance ahead, a distant look misting his eyes. "I told you why Sangeeta and I were over, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Nakul said, a brief doubt flashing in his mind as to where this was going. Rocky wasted no time in confirming his friend's suspicion. "What I didn't tell you was why I was over Sangeeta." He let out a faint snort. "Not that I was ever exactly crazy about her in the first place. Like I don't know why she was going out with me. An appalling materialist if I ever saw one. Anyway," he continued, with a dismissive wave of the hand. "No use talking about it now. Remember when I went into the CID disguised as your dad's golden boy?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, I ended up losing more than you know of." He smiled listlessly. "'Course, she never knew. And if she did, she never let on that I wasn't her boyfriend."

"Whoa, wait, wait." Nakul waved his arms frantically to cut Rocky off. "_Who_ are we talking about again?"

Silently, Rocky reached into his shirt and pulled out a long black cord which was around his neck, at the end of which dangled a locket of engraved metal. His curiosity building, Nakul opened it to find the photograph of a dark, somewhat feline-featured young woman with long curly hair. She was not looking at the photographer- her gaze was somewhere to the left, and she was smiling at something beyond the frame of the photo. Glancing at Rocky, Nakul noticed something he'd never seen before on his friend's face.

The locket shut with a snap, and the emotion Rocky had allowed his expression to briefly betray vanished as quickly as it had appeared. But it hadn't been lost on Nakul. "Who's that girl?" he wanted to know, and Rocky shook his head with the air of a dog shaking off a fly. "Just somebody."

His eyes told the real story, however, and that was all it took for Nakul to know, as surely as he knew that his father would do anything for the sake of his duty. He looked at Rocky, whose face was smoothly inscrutable once more, and felt a whole new kind of sympathy for the older man. Nakul himself may have had ninety-nine problems, but at least unrequited love wasn't one. "So..." he started, choosing his words carefully. "Does she know?"

Rocky let out a sound that was halfway between a snort and a sob. "As if. Do you think I'm an idiot? Mate, I'm a thief, a liar, a cheat, a gangster, a killer, and most recently, an impostor, but till date, the one thing I have never yet been accused of being is an idiot." He stared ahead moodily. "Of course she doesn't know. I made sure of that." Sighing heavily, he shook his head again. "Nah, she's better off with ol' goody-two-shoes. At least there she'll have a family to take care of her."

Nakul didn't quite know what to say to that. Instead, he reflected ruefully on Rocky's use of the term 'family'. Yes, of course, they had been his father's family in a way that he himself never had. And though he'd long since made peace with his resentment, it still hurt, somewhere in the deepest recesses of his heart.

Nevertheless, he looked at his friend and knew what was important- here and now. Reaching out, he grabbed Rocky around the shoulders in a headlock, turning a deaf ear to the latter's shrieks of protest, and ruffled his hair so that it stuck up even more messily than before. "My friend, the Devdas approach really doesn't suit you. You're way better off as the Don!" he laughed, and Rocky wrenched himself free with some difficulty, the old smirk gracing his face once more. "Nakul," he said seriously, folding his arms, "you just contradicted yourself. It's impossible to catch the Don, remember?" he asked with a wink, and Nakul rolled his eyes. "I swear, one of these days..."

"One of these days we'll get up off our asses and do something productive," Rocky supplied. "But today is not that day!" he added decisively, and ran back to the sofa, taking a flying leap and falling on it. His lean frame curling up in a catlike manner, he gave Nakul an even more catlike smirk. "See this sofa here? This here is my territory. Which is Rocky-speak for 'find someplace else to sit'."

"Everywhere else is full," Nakul retorted. "Which is Nakul-speak for 'I don't think so!'" With that, he proceeded to grab Rocky's ankles and attempt to pull him off the sofa. Unfortunately for him, though, Rocky was holding fast to the arm of the sofa and wasn't budging. "Is that the best you can do, little CID star-kid?" he sneered, and Nakul howled in outrage as he redoubled his efforts. "Wait- and- watch!" he huffed, pulling so hard it looked as though Rocky's legs might split right away from his torso.

"What in the name of heaven is going on here?" asked an incredulous voice, and Rocky fell back onto the sofa with an audible thump as Nakul dropped his ankles. Both men straightened up as a petite, fair-skinned girl with long wavy hair flowing down nearly to her waist approached them. "Do I _want_ to know?" she asked drily, raising her eyebrows. She wore a tomato-red T-shirt that read 'I am SHER-locked', with dark jeans and flip-flops.

"No," Rocky and Nakul said emphatically in unison, and the girl rolled her large dark eyes. "I thought as much. Anyway, I just came to ask you guys if you could possibly keep it down, cause Vivek and I are trying to have a conversation?"

"Tasha," Rocky said slowly. "You... guys... have... _eternity_... to have a conversation. Literally."

"That isn't the point," Tasha started, but Nakul yelled over their voices. "OK, OK! Let's not go around creating conflicts! Else we might just get kicked out of here and have to take _rebirths_, God forbid!"

The magic word immediately had the desired effect, and Tasha and Rocky sobered down faster than blinking. "OK, but just try to keep it down a bit, yeah?" Tasha asked wearily, and Rocky nodded obligingly. "Yes, ma'am."

That made her smile, and she tilted her head slightly as she scrutinised his face. "You know, I'm _really_ glad you don't look like Abhijeet sir anymore."

"Tell me about it," Rocky agreed. "If you yourself find it such a relief, just imagine how I must feel to finally have my own face back." He moved his hand in the air, and a mirror materialised out of nowhere. Holding it in one hand, he fixed his hair with the other, turning his face at all angles to admire it. "I love my face. I wish I'd loved it more when I was alive. Ah well. Like I said, Tasha, you and Vivek have all eternity to love each other, and I have all eternity to love my face."

He grinned at himself in the mirror. Except for a similar complexion and somewhat similar type of hair, he looked nothing like Abhijeet- his face was thinner, his features rather elfish, not handsome but still oddly charming in the way that only the most gifted of troublemakers can be. Nakul poked him in the shoulder. "All right, Miss India, that's enough preening for one day." Snatching the mirror deftly from Rocky, he tossed it into the air, where it disappeared into nothingness once again.

Taking her leave of them, Tasha vanished, her body fading until it was out of sight, and before Nakul could move, Rocky fell back onto the sofa within a fraction of a second, letting out a diabolical villain-laugh when Nakul turned and caught sight of him.

In the next room, Vivek and Tasha were interrupted by a sudden, thunderous roar that would have given them heart attacks if they hadn't already been in the afterlife.

"THAT'S MY SPOT!"

**~THE END~**

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A/N: Dear haters... I don't care and I regret nothing. Dear everyone who liked this, please let me know what you think. And just as a general thing, I'm never writing romance-based stories again, so yeah. One big problem solved for everyone. Oh, and in case it wasn't clear, Rocky, Nakul and Vivesha are dead and this story is happening in the afterlife. :)


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